My Story (The Gay Years), Part 6

Spring of my freshman year. I was gay; I'd had "sex" with a man. It was time to improve myself.

Improvement had several faces. First, I ignored the nonsense about "getting an associate's degree" and signed up for as many writing classes as I could. Second, I started (well, continued) to look for schools to transfer to. Third, I started riding my dad's old exercise bike.

One of my friends from the Dream Interpretation class, Weshaw, ended up in one of my writing classes. It was nice to have a friend again, let me tell you, especially since Jennie left that January for her new school. The writing classes were, like the Dream Interpretation class, safe spaces, although I mostly wrote silly poetry and science fiction back then. I got the idea, though, that if I were ever to write about gay characters, it would've been okay.

I was reading a book at the time called The Book of Dead Birds. I was quite surprised to find a dedication to my writing teacher inside; apparently, she and the author had gone to grad school together at a place called Antioch. I was researching a lot of small schools back then - small schools that were reportedly gay-friendly, that cared about each of their students, that had good writing programs, that were (hopefully) far from my small town. From that list, I short-listed my three favorites - Sarah Lawrence, in New York; Grinnell, in Iowa; and Antioch, in Ohio.

(Relevant aside: I applied and was accepted to the latter two, but I didn't even apply to Sarah Lawrence. Years later [as in, this past spring], I applied and was accepted to their grad program. I declined, to begin my medical studies. But in one of my entrance essays, I wrote about this period: "All of my potential [schools] were small, all of them liberal and easterly, all potentially snowy and definitely far from the west. Sarah Lawrence sent me a book-size pamphlet, and I carried that thing around with me like I was a closet alcoholic and it was my flask. I'd whip it out at school, at work, waiting for a movie to start, look at the treeful pictures and remind myself that there was something more than what I'd seen." It was pretty true. And "treeful" is a cool word.)

I chose Antioch. It was, at last, something to work towards, something I'd chosen, consciously, with my eye wide open, as opposed to the obvious filtration from state high school into state university. I liked what I'd chosen. I packed three months early. I was ready to be fully gay, in a place where it was okay.

But I skip ahead. It's worth mentioning the one way I was fully gay in my town, too: the community college's GLBT club. It was, simply, "the GLBT club," and we met once a week, Friday afternoons, in a secluded classroom. The group was a small one, and included several older women, including the club's sponsor, and Drew, the club president. He was a year older than me, and he was cute in a "I wear glasses to make me look good" kind of way. I've never really cared for that whole show myself, but Harriet the spy did it too, I guess.... But Harriet did it to look smart, not to "fill out her face" (whatever that means). Anyway, digressing, so: He was nice, and he had a boyfriend who lasted just until the end of the term and made him unavailable until I left.

It wasn't a bad club, as far as my one hour per week of being fully gay went. I remember one particular night, before World AIDS Day, when we all met at Drew's apartment to prepare. Specifically, we sat down and watched the pilot episodes of The L Word and Queer as Folk while we stuffed condoms, instructions, and spearmint LifeSavers into little baggies. It was fun. I was jealous, because Drew's boyfriend was there, and they'd kiss whenever Drew got up to go to the kitchen or something. Well, "jealous" doesn't even really cover it, because I was just as fascinated. I had never seen gay people in real life acting as though they were perfectly normal in their affection. I was impressed, and as much as I immediately crushed on both of them (they were gay, they were my age, they were unavailable; it was obvious), I was upset when I heard that they'd broken up. I wanted them to stay together, maybe more for my illusions than for their emotions.

The summer seemed like a last hurrah. I'd dropped from a 38/40 waistline to a 28/30, and lost over thirty pounds. I was happy, for the first time, with how I looked (though I do remember experimenting with self-tanner, to some rather unfortunately orange results). At work, during my last week, I got cards from all my friends, and the biggest surprise of all - from the owner, another card, an $100 bill, and a free going-away party for me and my friends. Obviously I wasn't as much a "weirdo" as I'd assumed! I gave her the only hug of our entire relationship, and looked toward a new beginning.